Preparations are underway for the 2009 U.N. World Conference on Racism and, as a result of intense lobbying by the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the issue of "Islamophobia" will be a prominent focus. The World Conference could ensure that a prohibition against "Islamophobia" will be endorsed by the world community as the newest international human right.

Hudson's conference explained the proposed bans against "Islamophobia," comparing them to blasphemy strictures that have been used to curtail freedoms of expression, press, and religion by some of the OIC's most repressive member states- Hudson Institute

Anne Bayefsky

Anne Bayefsky is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute and formerly taught law at Columbia University Law School. Since 1984, she has participated in U.N. human rights conferences on both official and non-governmental delegations, and conducted a major review of U.N. human rights legal documents in collaboration with the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights. She has authored a book on the United Nations, published numerous articles, and is the recipient of Canada's highest annual human rights research award.

Paul Marshall

Paul Marshall is senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and at the Center for Religious Freedom, Freedom House, Washington, D.C. He is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute and the author and editor of over twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom. He has just completed a world survey on religious freedom, to be published this December, and is heading a research project on blasphemy and political repression.

Fahad Nazer

Fahad Nazer is a resident fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs Through his work and his writing, including most recently a briefing series on Yale Global Online, he has helped bring attention to the obstacles facing political reformers in Saudi Arabia and the country's policy of violating the religious freedom of non-Muslims, as well as Muslims who do not follow the state supported Wahhabi doctrines. Previously, he served as a political analyst in the Political Affairs Department of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC.

Nina Shea

An international human-rights lawyer for twenty-five years, Nina Shea joined Hudson Institute as a senior fellow in November 2006, where she directs the Center for Religious Freedom.
For the ten years prior to joining Hudson, Shea worked at Freedom House, where she directed the Center for Religious Freedom, an entity which she had helped found in 1986 as the Puebla Institute.
Since 1999, Shea has served as a Commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, where she is currently vice chair. She has been appointed as a U.S. delegate to the United Nation's main human rights body by both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Ahmed Subhy Mansour

Sheikh Ahmed Subhy Mansour is an Egyptian national with more than thirty years of scholarship on Islam, a former assistant professor at Al Azhar University, a former visiting visiting fellow at National Endowment for Democracy and a fellow at the Human Rights Program, HarvardLawSchool. He is the founder of the Quranic movement, a reform effort against fanaticism and bigotry in the Muslim world. In 2002, he was granted political asylum in the United States because of persecution in Egypt.